Michelle Herrick Named JP Morgan Commercial Real Estate Head

In an industry centered in New York and dominated by men, Chicago-based Michelle Herrick wasn’t overlooked.

Her ascent from working as an analyst at La Salle Bank to high ranking positions within Bank of America and JP Morgan recently reached new heights with her appointment as JP Morgan’s head of commercial real estate, overseeing a $145 billion business.

Since joining JP Morgan in 2017, Herrick’s territory has expanded steadily. She started as the real estate banking division’s central region market manager, in charge of territory stretching from Atlanta to Seattle. It wasn’t long before the entire U.S. became her responsibility, and starting in January, she will take over the entire division and report to John Simmons, JPMorgan’s head of commercial banking.

Al Brooks, who has led the unit for nearly a decade, will transition to a vice chair position within the bank’s commercial banking group. Herrick’s purview will include agency lending, community development banking, commercial term lending and real estate banking.

Despite her ever-expanding responsibilities, Herrick has so-far remained firmly planted in Chicago.

While she was managing the bank’s central region, she sometimes traveled to and from Seattle in a single day, Bloomberg reported.

She’s already made a significant mark on Chicago. She helped bring together a group of lenders to fund the $549 million construction loan for Salesforce Tower, one of the city’s largest financing deals of 2020 and one of the only large scale developments to start construction during the pandemic.

She also founded Yield Chicago, a program with the Urban Land Institute aimed at improving the diversity of developers in the city.

It’s not clear whether she’ll move to New York, where JP Morgan is headquartered, when her new position takes effect, but it may not matter to the bank’s top brass.

“I’ve had multiple clients call and tell me, ‘I want Michelle Herrick on my account … She’s almost a brand,” said JP Morgan’s head of Real Estate Americas, Chad Tredway, in a 2020 interview with Crain’s for its 40 under 40 ranking which included Herrick.

As a mother of three in her early 40s, Herrick is breaking the mold of banking executives and showing no signs of slowing, as she enters the bank’s top commercial real estate job at a historically difficult time for the sector.

The bank’s strategy has been to remain an active lender at a time when high interest rates and a troubling market outlook have kept other institutions on the sidelines.

“We’ve watched the overall bank piece of the debt pie be a little less active — for a variety of reasons that may continue — and that may or may not switch back to banks feeling comfortable with their exposure or wishing to grow their exposure,” Herrick told the Commercial Observer. “At JP Morgan, we’re very comfortable with our exposure. Again, it doesn’t start with a dollar amount of debt; it starts with a desire to serve clients and their needs, and what ends up on our balance sheet is more of a reflection of that.”

A recent rate cut from the federal reserve with the potential for more on the horizon, could mean Herrick is stepping into her new position at a legacy-defining moment.

Andrew Terrell contributed to this report.